


Fear Not for the Future

by HiNerdsItsCat (HiLarpItsCat)



Series: Uncertain Point of View [11]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Divergence - Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Episode: s05e16 The Lawless, F/M, Mandalore, POV Satine Kryze, POV Second Person, Post-Episode: s05e16 The Lawless, Satine Kryze Lives, Seduction to the Dark Side, Sith Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) Spoilers, The Author Made Herself Sad, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-13
Updated: 2018-11-13
Packaged: 2019-08-22 22:38:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16606745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HiLarpItsCat/pseuds/HiNerdsItsCat
Summary: Your name is Satine Kryze. You are the Duchess of Mandalore.You survived Maul's attack when Obi-Wan Kenobi rescued you. It never occurred to you to ask what he did to save you.You married Obi-Wan in secret and waited for the war to end. It never occurred to you to ask what he meant when he said he would do whatever it took to end the war.





	Fear Not for the Future

**Author's Note:**

> Setting: 19 BBY, during the Clone Wars episode "The Lawless"

Your name is Satine Kryze.

You are the Duchess of Mandalore. You led your people through one of the worst periods in their history. You are smart and unflinching and you never compromise your principles.

When you were a teenager, you made a very foolish decision that was not actually a decision at all: you fell in love with a Jedi. You fell in love with one of the only people in the galaxy who you couldn’t possibly be with.

Worst of all, you are fairly certain that he felt the same way about you.

As though you didn’t have enough challenges in your life.

You refuse to pine away; there is too much else to do. Besides, it is unlikely that your paths will ever cross again.

* * *

Of course it would be war that brought Obi-Wan Kenobi back into your life. Things can never be simple, can they?

Not only that, but he is arguing for a military presence on your world. He is leading an army. He is killing people.

On top of that, he is driving you crazy. You might be a pacifist, but you would be lying if you said that you didn’t want to strangle him half the time. You both lose your composure and argue and make utter fools of yourselves in front of everyone; his apprentice in particular seems to find the whole thing highly amusing.

And yet, agonizingly, you are still in love with him.

When the traitor Tal Merrik takes you hostage, you see the look on Obi-Wan’s face and that’s when you know for sure that he feels the same way. For all his talk of war and the necessity of violence, he can’t bring himself to kill Merrik and you realize that it’s because of you: because you believe so strongly in pacifism that you are willing to die for it.

It makes keeping silent about your feelings seem rather trivial, so you confess that you’ve always loved him. He confesses that if you had said the word, he would have left the Jedi Order.

His apprentice ends up killing Merrik and that’s when you remember that, despite what you both feel, you and Obi-Wan are still in the same position you were in before: you can’t be together. Not without one of you turning their back on their duties and ideals.

But to have it all out in the open now has given you both weapons deadlier than any lightsaber.

* * *

One day, Obi-Wan dies.

You attend the funeral on Coruscant and feel as though you’ve died as well.

You don’t have anyone to turn to with these feelings. Nobody knew what had passed between you. Nobody knew how many times you have tortured yourself with the thought that, if you had said the word, he would have left the Order and he would still be alive.

A few weeks later, he turns out to have been alive this whole time; he faked his death in order to complete a mission for the Jedi. You’re relieved and elated but you also aren’t sure who you’re more furious with: the Jedi Order or him.

You both had the power to wound one another and he did.

You still love him but you can’t bear to look at him.

* * *

It is a year later and everything has gone wrong: violence in the streets, your government overthrown, and Maul undoing everything you worked so hard to achieve.

And now, here he is, using you as a weapon against Obi-Wan.

They are arguing about the Dark Side but you’re barely listening because you know how this will end. You want to spend your last minutes of life considering all of the things that the galaxy has given you instead of all the things that are being taken away from you.

You hope he knows that you love him. You hope he remembers what you said before: that you always loved him.

Maul pulls you to him and towards the horrible blade that he is holding. As you use what you know will be your final moments to look at Obi-Wan, you see something shift behind his eyes.

Then everything is consumed by pain.

* * *

You wake up in a bacta tank.

You’re alive.

Maul is dead but your world is lost.

Obi-Wan and your sister worked together to save you and get you off-planet. You only survived Maul’s attack because he was stopped before he completely ran you through with the Darksaber. Even so, your recovery is going to take a long time.

Obi-Wan has barely left your side. For the first time in your memory, he looks truly shaken. You are both unable to take your eyes off of one another and he holds your hand as tightly as he dares without hurting you. However, the ache of all your unspoken words is somehow more painful than that of your physical injuries.

Eventually, you can’t bear it any longer and realize that it is finally time to admit it: you have passed the point of no return with one another and now something has to change.

The final barrier between you is swept away and he says all of the things that he had been holding back all these years. How the Jedi discourage attachments but he could never find a way to let go of his feelings for you. How, when he thought you wouldn’t survive, he realized how desperately he needed you.

He tells you that he loves you.

He tells you that, even now, if you said the word he would leave the Jedi Order.

He begs you to ask him.

You don’t know what to do with all of the things that you’re feeling but you do know one thing: you can’t ask this of him. Not now. Not while he has duties to the Jedi and the Republic.

One more reason to despise warfare.

You hate the fact that he is a general but you also know that if he walks away from his obligations in the middle of the war he’ll never forgive himself.

You tell him this and the heartbreak on his face matches the feeling in your chest.

He says that he’ll stay until the war ends but not a second longer. Once peace is restored to the galaxy, nothing will be able to keep you apart.

But in the meantime you know that it will be agony.

You propose a compromise and propose to him.

* * *

You marry in secret and he returns to the war.

You focus on your recovery and eventually get back to the work of leading your people, albeit from afar since the Shadow Collective still has a stranglehold on your world. You know that the only way to bring peace to Mandalore is to remove them from power but you don’t know how to do it without sparking another civil war. You worry that if things keep on as they are, it will be the Death Watch that ends up taking power; you obviously love your sister but you fear the kind of damage Bo-Katan could do to Mandalore if she can’t see reason.

You see your husband as often as you can. It never feels like enough and every encounter is almost overwhelming in its desperation. You both grow impatient; Obi-Wan more than you. He vows to do whatever it takes to end the war.

Sometimes you look in his eyes and see the same strange shift that you saw in them right before Maul tried to kill you. It occurs to you that he never told you exactly what happened during that confrontation and now you worry that it was much worse than you thought. You wonder what he means when he says that he will do whatever it takes. You realize that you don’t want to know.

Right before you proposed, you said that you had passed the point of no return. Every day since then confirms how correct you were: there is no escape for the two of you.

Either you will pull each other out of this inferno and run for cover, or you will burn alive together.

* * *

Padmé Amidala figures out what is going on between you. You thought that you and Obi-Wan had been discreet, but she knows the signs to look for.

This is because she secretly married a Jedi as well.

You both find the whole thing impossibly funny.

Even more amusing is the look on Obi-Wan and Anakin’s faces when they find out.

* * *

Having someone else who knows your secret would be a good thing if the four of you weren’t constantly encouraging each others’ worst fears: fears that the war will never end, that Obi-Wan and Anakin will be killed, that you and Padmé will be killed. Your stolen moments with your husband become even more frantic than before because it feels like you are in a race against time.

You still believe that extremists like Dooku can be reasoned with. Obi-Wan decides to approach Chancellor Palpatine about the possibility of finding a diplomatic solution to the conflict.

Mandalore is no closer to peace than it was on the day that you left. The Death Watch is wreaking havoc, Bo-Katan won’t speak to you, and sooner or later either the Republic or the Separatists will try to take advantage of the unrest. You feel as though your words are falling on deaf ears.

Obi-Wan’s work with the Chancellor is going well, at least. Not only does it keep him closer to Coruscant, allowing you to spend more time together, but it also seems to be calming some of his anxieties. He is growing more certain that their plans will succeed in bringing an end to the war. You smile at how much things have changed since you married, how he has grown from a violent soldier into a peaceful negotiator. He tells you that the Chancellor is sympathetic to the challenges you are facing on your homeworld and that once the war with the Separatists ends, the Republic will do what it can to help end the conflict there.

However, he is also growing increasingly frustrated with the Jedi Order. They keep pulling him away from his work with the Chancellor to send him on combat missions. Even worse, when they do let him stay on Coruscant they demand information from him about the Chancellor’s activities. Obi-Wan says that he feels like he is being made into a spy for the Council. He worries that they might not let him leave even after the war is over. You remind him that the Jedi have no power to _make_ him do anything and that he doesn’t need their permission to leave the Order. He says that it isn’t that simple. He says that they have more power than you realize; possibly too much power.

You see that strange look in his eye again and think to yourself that the sooner he leaves the Order, the better.

* * *

You and Padmé watch General Grievous’ ship fall from orbit and realize that the next few minutes will decide if you are both about to become widows.

Padmé is handling it much worse than you are because she just discovered that she is pregnant and hasn’t told Anakin yet. All you can think is that both Grievous and Dooku are aboard the _Invisible Hand_ and that this bloody day might in fact be the day that the war ends. You remember Obi-Wan telling you that he would do whatever it took to end the war; you hope that it isn’t at the cost of his life. To survive so much only to lose him now… it would kill you.

However, Anakin manages to pull off the impossible and land the ship; Obi-Wan jokes later that at least his apprentice learned _something_ from all of the crashes he’s been in over the years.

Your reunion is short-lived; General Grievous escaped and is now the leader of the Separatists, which means that the war continues. You despair over the fact that Dooku was killed, because you still believe that a nonviolent solution was possible, but you attempt to reassure yourself that at least your husband did all he could to try to avert it.

Obi-Wan returns from a meeting with the Jedi Council on the verge of panic: they have tasked him with confronting and defeating Grievous. Alone. He is convinced that they figured out his plan to leave the Order and that this assignment is meant to be a suicide mission. You try to calm him down but you find yourself becoming afraid as well. The Jedi are supposed to be the guardians of peace and yet they have killed so many in the last few years. Would they really go that far to contain a heretic? You aren’t sure anymore.

You can’t bring yourself to sit by and hope that your husband survives, so you ask him what you can do to help. He tells you that Anakin will be advising the Chancellor in the meantime; even though Obi-Wan can’t trust the Jedi, he can always trust Anakin, and you should too.

He seems to have that strange look in his eyes all the time now and you worry that even if his body survives the war, his mind might not.

* * *

Coruscant is in chaos and you keep hearing two versions of what is going on. Either the Republic turned against the Jedi and the Chancellor went mad with power, or the Jedi attempted to take over the Republic and were only stopped by the clone troopers under their command.

You don’t know which story you believe until Anakin finds you and tells you that he was there in the Chancellor’s office when the Jedi came to kill him. There is something very strange about him but you remember Obi-Wan telling you to trust his apprentice, so you do.

Days pass and there is no word from your husband. Anakin has left Coruscant on a mission of his own and meanwhile Padmé is horrified at the changes in the Senate. You privately admit that you don’t see much of a difference between calling it a Republic and calling it an Empire if the Senate still exists and the same person is still in charge. But, of course, you’re a Duchess, so perhaps the idea of an Emperor is easier for you to accept than Padmé, who is from a world where even their monarchs are democratically elected. At any rate, Mandalore is not part of the Republic or the Empire, so although you feel bad for Padmé, it doesn’t much matter what form of government they choose as long as they allow your system to stay neutral.

At last, Obi-Wan contacts you. He is on Mandalore and says that now that the war is over, the Empire has intervened and restored order. He says that you can finally return home, that you can finally stop hiding your relationship, and that you can finally live in peace.

Something about the way he talks about the Empire and “order” sends a shiver down your spine. A dozen unpleasant questions begin to worm their way through your mind but you decide to postpone asking them until you see him in person.

* * *

This is not your world.

Not anymore.

The Empire did not restore order: it conquered your home and killed thousands of your people. Mandalore is no longer neutral. It is now part of the Empire.

Obi-Wan says that you are still Regent of the system and that things can continue the way they did before, but you can barely stand to look at him. You don’t recognize this person wearing your husband’s face and standing knee-deep in the blood of your people while talking about peace.

This is not peace.

He warns you that there are other clans eager to pledge loyalty to the Empire and there is a risk that you will be deposed. He says that he is trying to keep you safe.

You look around at the hundreds of clone troopers walking the streets of Sundari and you notice that they keep looking to Obi-Wan for instructions. You realize that he didn’t arrive here after the Empire invaded: he was the one leading the invasion.

You accuse him of lying to you this whole time about seeking a nonviolent solution to the conflict. You say that you didn’t want this. You say that all you wanted was peace.

He snaps at you that peace is a lie.

You demand to know why he turned his back on everything that he knew was important to you. He says that there was no other way, that the only way for you to keep being a pacifist was if someone else did the killing for you, and that he is willing to be that person. He almost looks sad when he says it but there is still something horrible in his eyes that you can’t ignore anymore.

You realize that your husband is gone. You also realize that you are both so far past the point of no return that you have no escape from one another.

* * *

For what is possibly the first time in your lives, you and your sister agree on something: the Empire must be resisted.

You also agree that you will have to abdicate your position. The Empire used you and used your marriage to give its occupation legitimacy; without you as Duchess, Obi-Wan can no longer pretend that he is merely helping you rule.

Bo-Katan will find and claim the Darksaber and unite Mandalore against the Empire.

As for you, you will use the only weapon you have: the terrible power that you hold over your husband’s heart.

You will distract him for as long as you can while the battle rages outside.

Obi-Wan has tried for weeks to bring you around to his way of thinking and you ignored him. You refused to speak to him. But now you do.

You tell him the story of his life with you: how you fell in love while on the run so long ago, how you never stopped loving one another in spite of time and war and duty, how you planned a future together… and how he threw all of that away.

You can see how much pain you are causing him and you continue.

You tell him all of the horrible ways he chipped away at the man you fell in love with. You detail every instance where he turned his back on his principles, on his commitments, and on every promise he ever made to you.

Your words are tearing him apart.

You deliver the fatal blow: you hiss at him that you wish he had let Maul kill you so that you wouldn’t have to see the monster standing before you now.

You break his heart.

Obi-Wan lunges for you and you know that you have done all you can do. You knew when you walked into this room that you wouldn’t be leaving it.

But neither will he.

He barely gets his fingers around your throat when the detonators set by the Death Watch begin to go off. The whole Royal Palace is being ripped apart around you.

You stand with your husband in the center of an inferno.

You are past the point of no return. There is no escape.

All you can do is burn together.

**Author's Note:**

> Music: CHVRCHES, "Never Say Die"


End file.
